The Body in the Woods: A Point Last Seen Mystery

12 volunteer teens meet in the Portland County Sheriff’s Office to be divided into teams. The plan is for each team to start on opposite sides of the park to look for Bobby Balog, a 34-year-old man with autism spectrum disorder.

Alexis is having a hard time balancing home, school, and after-school. As she was getting her gear, the apartment was a mess—her mother is having an episode. SAR is Alexis’s way into college and out of her neighborhood, but even state school is expensive. She has a B average, which is not enough for scholarships.

Bobby’s parents arrive in a silver Lexus. Mrs. Balog is shocked that the Portland Search and Rescue is made up of teenagers, but adult coordinator Jon Partridge provides reassurance for Bobby’s parents that the SAR teams have hundreds of hours of training and have completed dozens of rescues. The team needs to start searching while it’s still light out. Bobby’s parents describe him: He has no physical disabilities, is not very talkative, and is a fast walker. He will probably hide from them because he loves the woods and doesn’t like strangers.

Alexis, Ruby, and Nick, the three newest volunteers, end up in a group together with the least experience and hours. Jon says Nick is in charge of the group and Ruby gets the topography map, leaving nothing for Alexis to do but to tag along.

Nick thinks the trail they were given isn’t worth taking seriously: “We’re not going to be the ones to find him” (11). Alexis feels that Nick might be right, but she continues carefully scouting the woods, thinking of fairytale forest imagery with witches and wolves. She shivers and Ruby offers her an extra jacket. Alexis denies it and is unsurprised and slightly annoyed by Ruby being over-prepared. Ruby has top of the line gear bought by her parents and Alexis gets her things second-hand.

They ask several people they come across whether they’ve seen Bobby, but no luck. Alexis wonders if Bobby is hurt or worse, and then stumbles on a brown spiral notebook. It’s a birding notebook that belongs to a white-haired man, who thanks Alexis for his notebook and says he dropped it last night while looking for a northern spotted owl. When Ruby says it could be a barred owl, the older man’s face lights up realizing that Ruby is also a birder. Alexis explains to the older man that they’re looking for Bobby. The man hasn’t seen him, but he’ll keep an eye out.

Ruby takes off after Nick, leaving Alexis alone. Alexis and Ruby got close during orientation, as some of the only girls left in the program, but Alexis pushed Ruby away as soon as Ruby started asking her questions about her life. A shadow catches Alexis’s eye: “The curve of a back. Lying motionless in the ferns,” (17).

Nick is becoming bored. He wonders what the point of searching for Bobby in the least likely part of the park is. Nick feels like he doesn’t fit in with a lot of the other kids, but believes that just like his father, he is capable of unimaginable feats of bravery if given the chance. He imagines his father in Iraq: gray rubble, smoke, and sand-colored roads. Nick’s father died in combat when Nick was four. Now, his mother keeps his Bronze Star medal in her dresser and never speaks of him.

Nick wants to join the army—he thinks he’ll belong there, since he doesn’t belong anywhere else. He is biracial and had seen people clutch their purses before realizing he was the son of a white woman. He rarely sees another Black person in Southwest Portland. He believes none of that would matter in the army, where only being strong and brave matters.

Nick hears whistles going off and runs down the trail, determined to help. He imagines all the ways he could get an injured Bobby to safety, hoping his fantasies are coming true.

Alexis hopes what she’s seeing isn’t real. Fear washes over her as she looks at the unmoving body, face-down, in a black jacket. Alexis feels nauseous as she approaches the body, which she assumes belongs to Bobby. She wonders if he is unconscious from hitting his head, or if he passed out from pain or a heart attack, or maybe if he’s napping. Too afraid to go over to him, she blows her whistle three times, knowing that anyone from SAR who heard it would come running. Alexis thinks that Nick and Ruby would know what to do, since his dad was in the army and Ruby’s parents are doctors.

Alexis moves closer and sees that the clothes on the body don’t match the description of Bobby. Then she sees shoulder length, blond hair. Another wave of nausea washes over Alexis as she realizes the body doesn’t belong to Bobby.

Ruby moves down the path like a cat, sidetracked by the birds around her. She wonders if she will one day see a northern spotted owl like the birder hoped to. Ruby knows the northern spotted owl is nocturnal and endangered.

Ruby hears Alexis’s three whistles, runs, and finds Alexis standing beside the trail, pointing at a body too small to be Bobby—a girl Ruby’s age with blond hair and green eye shadow. Ruby assumes the role of a first responder, introducing herself and telling the patient what she’s doing. The girl doesn’t respond. The girl’s wrist is cool and Ruby feels no pulse. Nick runs up and checks for a pulse in the neck. Ruby announces that the girl is dead. Nick shouts into his radio as Alexis sobs.

Ruby studies the marks on the girl’s neck: Someone used a narrow cord to strangle her. There are shallow scratches down the neck and two broken nails: The girl tried to fight back. Ruby tells Nick and Alexis that the girl was murdered, and they’re horrified. Ruby explains the ligature mark on her neck and that the girl had tried to get whatever was used around her neck loose. When Alexis asks her how she knows all of this, Ruby tells her that you just have to look. Nick looks around them and wonders out loud if the person who did this could be watching them.

Alexis can’t believe how calm Ruby is, as if she is discussing birds. This is the first dead body Alexis has ever seen, and she has a hard time believing it’s real. Alexis wonders how a girl her age could end up like this. Nick picks up a rock, scared that whoever did this could kill again, but Ruby tells him to think logically: The killer can’t hurt all three of them without making noise, so they are safe. Ruby tells them to stop moving around over the evidence; they shouldn’t touch anything, but should look for clues.

They speculate on who the girl might be, who the killer or killers might be, and what could have happened. Ruby points to a footprint beside the body, studying it to memorize it with her near-photographic memory.

Nick hears footsteps moving fast towards them. Nick clutches the rock in his hand and Alexis fumbles for her multipurpose tool, knowing it’s an inadequate weapon. Nick throws down his rock before running away and leaving the girls behind.

The sharp sound of a radio precedes Jon and Mitchell, who rush over to the girls to make sure they’re okay. Alexis tells they found a dead girl and Ruby point out the footprint and the ligature mark on the girl’s neck. Mitchell says Bobby is okay—another team just found him. Nick returns, pretending not to have just run away in terror.

Paramedics arrive. Although Ruby calls out for them to avoid the footprint she found, one of the EMTs steps on it. Chris Nagle, the sheriff’s deputy, arrives a few minutes later with Officer Ostrom, a Portland cop. Ruby and Nick tell the officer what they know. Alexis can’t help but think about the girl putting on the green eye shadow. What is the point of doing anything, “if in the end you were just dead?” (38). It’s dark when they leave the scene. In the parking lot, an officer reminds them not to talk about what happened until they’re questioned by police, so they don’t contaminate their memories.

Alexis is freezing. A young man touches her elbow: He is Bran Dawson from the Trauma Intervention Program. He’s a volunteer who helps when possible trauma victims are young. Nick and Ruby are with other volunteers too.  Alexis feels it’s wrong to call herself a victim, but Bran takes her to one of the idling cop cars and he gives her a blanket from his trunk. Bran’s job is to just listen. She can tell him anything. Alexis doesn’t want to talk, so he tells her he will just stand with her. After a few minutes of silence, she can’t help but exclaim that the girl’s green eye shadow and her almost closed eye keep flashing in her mind. Everything feels surreal, like a movie set. Bran says it’s common to feel like what’s happening after trauma isn’t real because it takes time to process what’s happened. Before Alexis can respond, she hears Nick choking as he bends over to vomit.